Smart Energy + Transportation Infrastructure

Why economics is key to addressing environmental impacts of roads.

Tools

CSF has developed the below tools to help analyze the effects of infrastructure and provide a platform to stimulate debate, transparency and ultimately good decisions on large-scale development. These tools allow users to understand energy options and calculate various factors to help determine which projects make the most economic and environmental sense, providing immediate results that could impact the future of fragile ecosystems and local communities world-wide.

The HydroCalculator computes the economic, environmental and social aspects of the hydroelectric dams. With this tool, users can analyze planned or prospective dams by inputting data on the location of the dam, its cost, reservoir size and capacity. The tool computes the economic return, greenhouse gas emissions, habitat loss and people displaced per megawatt of capacity. Projects can be ranked and viewed on a global map, where they are color-coded according to their economic rate of return.

The Roads Filter is an analysis tool that ranks 36 road projects in the Amazon region depending on their level of economic, environmental, socio-political, and cultural risk. The overall risk of each project is assessed through an index built from 17 variables grouped into four categories and weighted according to their relative importance. Users can sort the roads by country, road or rank and adjust weights by creating custom filters and modifying each rank according to preference.